“The private-label market is showing new signs of life,” according to Standard & Poor’s, which predicted that banks are likely to increase their securitization of jumbo mortgages. In a report released late last week, S&P projected $14 billion in non-agency jumbo MBS in 2013. Redwood alone set a goal of issuing $7 billion in non-agency MBS this year and is on pace to exceed that volume, helped by a pending $425 million deal, its sixth of the year. PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust is also aiming to issue a non-agency jumbo MBS in the Redwood mold in the third quarter of 2013. JPMorgan Chase and EverBank Financial issued...[Includes one data chart]

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently proposed changes to modeling values of insurance company holdings of non-agency MBS and commercial MBS. The proposal could increase loss forecasts and prompt some sales of the securities, according to analysts. The NAIC proposed using the Treasury strip curve as the discount rate in determining the net-present value of expected loss for modeled securities, as opposed to using each security’s coupon rate to determine expected losses. The standard-setting group governed by state insurance regulators noted that the Treasury strip curve is a risk-free curve. “Using a consistent risk-free rate for all modeled securities in calculating the expected loss reflects...

Industry groups argue that the Mortgage Resolution Partners proposal on eminent domain and MBS raises serious legal and constitutional issues.

Moody’s Investors Service has come up with a monitoring approach to evaluating “tail risk” in non-agency MBS that pay scheduled principal and prepayments to the securities on a pro-rata basis and assessing the adequacy of the credit enhancement available to the rated securities. Tail risk is what might be described as the “end of life” risk of a disproportionately large loss (based on current balance of the pool) on the underlying pool at the end of a transaction’s term when few loans remain in the pool and credit enhancements, although high in percentage terms, may be very low in dollar terms. The proposed change in approach at Moody’s will mostly affect...

The commercial MBS market is starting to catch fire. Moreover, a new report from Fitch notes that commercial delinquencies continued to fall last year, a trend that will continue.

For years, Union Bank of San Francisco has made a name for itself as a top-ranked portfolio lender of jumbo mortgages – but all that could soon change. No, Union Bank isn’t leaving the space – not by a long shot – but the $94 billion asset commercial bank is in the midst of making a major push into conventional lending where its footprint has been quite small. “It’s...

Nationwide, mortgage originations fell by 4.8 percent during the first quarter of 2013, but a lot of that decline took place at the industry’s biggest lender, Wells Fargo, according to a new market analysis and ranking by Inside Mortgage Finance. Mortgage originations totaled an estimated $500.0 billion during the first three months of the year, down from $525.0 billion during the fourth quarter of 2012. It still ranked as the fourth strongest quarter in new loan production since the mortgage market tanked back in 2008, and originations in early 2013 were up 19.0 percent from the same period last year. But most of the indicators are...[Includes two data charts]

Residential fundings by hard-money lender CALCAP Advisors are on the rise, a bright sign for the sector.

EverBank funded $2.9 billion of home mortgages in the first quarter, a bit below one estimate of $3.3 billion.

Bank of America earlier this year finally settled its long-running dispute with Fannie Mae over buyback demands, an agreement that may help open a window to the government-sponsored enterprise that has been limited to refinance loans. During the first quarter of 2013, BofA sold $6.52 billion of mortgages to Fannie – all of them refinance loans. The company hasn’t sold purchase-money mortgages to the GSE since early 2012, when the two broke off new transactions that didn’t involve refinancing of existing Fannie loans serviced by the bank. In fact, BofA only sold...